“Thy money survive with thee,” said the preacher. “Is that all you want me to be a priest for? Isn’t there another reason?” His eyes twinkled. “Isn’t there something else I could do for you—you or Claude—if I should turn priest?”
“Yes,” said Tarbox, with grave lips, but merry eyes; “we’ve both got to have one.”
In fact they had two. Yet I have it from her husband himself, that Madame Tarbox insists to this day, always with the same sweet dignity, that she never did say yes.
On the other hand, when Claude and Marguerite were kneeling at the altar the proud St. Pierre, senior, spoke an audible and joyously impatient affirmative every time either of them was asked a question. When the time came for kissing, Sidonie, turning from both brides, kissed St. Pierre the more for that she kissed not Claude, then turned again and gave a tear with the kiss she gave to Zoséphine. But the deepest, gladdest tears at those nuptials were shed by Bonaventure Deschamps.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Acadians.
[2] Raccoon.
[3] During the war.
[4] Écrevisse, crawfish.
[5] The “shaking prairie,” “trembling prairie,” or prairie tremblante, is low, level, treeless delta land, having a top soil of vegetable mould overlying immense beds of quicksand.